


cabochon

by Mythopoeia



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [327]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (The kids are the men of Mithrim and the March West), (and also Mae), And I’ll never get that out of my head, Angst, F/M, Flashback, Fluff, Fun fact the ship name is Gem, Galway and Jem would have been immediate best friends with Gwindor and Estrela, Gen, Happy birthday to my co-author, In texting today it came up that Galway and Jem are basically divorced single parents with kids, I’m so sorry, I’ve promised this for a while, Mithrim, PTSD, Pre-Angband, What a good pair of tags, Wholly unnecessary backstory, and death, and now I’m Sad, flirting???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27598151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/pseuds/Mythopoeia
Summary: Feanor’s boy was braver than he knew, a stubborn hope lighting up every empty part of him, even his rain-grey eyes.His hair was running dark with the water across his face; with the wind. They felt the crack of thunder in their bones, watching him.He said: “Be careful—“
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [327]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	cabochon

The shape of men, in the driving rain—the shape of a machete swinging down. 

The sound of a bowstring released, and an arrow finding bone in the back of the skull, having passed through the startled, open eye. 

*

Feanor’s boy was braver than he knew, a stubborn hope lighting up every empty part of him, even his rain-grey eyes. 

His hair was running dark with the water across his face; with the wind. They felt the crack of thunder in their bones, watching him. 

He said: “Be careful—“

*

“He’ll be all right,” Galway murmured, with a sigh. “He’s a smart lad—only needs some time to feel his way through the loss. Once we find the little one, he’ll pick himself up quick.”

“If we find,” Jem said immediately, as he knew she would. But she sounded tired, not harsh. She rubbed at her eyes.

Maedhros shivered, in his sleep. Galway had covered him with his horse blanket, after he had finally fallen asleep, but the night air was still cold, and damp with the promise of rain. He twitched again, as Galway watched, his fingers curling. He had not wept, since they left Mithrim, but he had not slept, either; who could guess, now, what he saw in his dreams?

Perhaps he was only cold, despite the blanket. Galway wished they could have risked a fire.

“It’s a hard thing,” Jem whispered, and when Galway looked up he saw her face was tipped toward Maedhros as well, her eyes a catlike gleam. “Loss.”

“And he’s a brave lad.” Galway smiled at the Mithrim woman reassuringly, before remembering she couldn’t possibly see his expression in the dark. “Look, Jem; I’m not tired yet, I’ll sit up. You get some sleep, and I’ll wake you in a few hours. We can cover the watch tonight between the two of us.”

She did not reply, but she did stretch out quietly, tense and half-curled against the roots of a tree. The shape of her, now, was turned towards him. He could not see her eyes, with the moonlight out of them.

“I hope we find the boy,” she whispered, long after he thought her asleep.

Maedhros shivered again.

“We’ll do the best we can,” Galway whispered back to them both. 

*

“The boys told me the cat’s name is Jib,” he said, amused, setting aside his whetstone as he clicked at the dubious creature. “Jib, on account of its not caring for the cut of ours, and also because they were forced to rename it after the first name choice was rather violently protested against. Did they really dare call the poor thing Jem, to start with?”

Jem scowled, but said nothing. Galway chuckled. 

“Not that I cannot see the similarity—“

“It’s an ugly beast,” Jem said sourly, without tipping back her hat. She shifted slightly against the logs, stretching one leg out, somehow very cat-like herself. “And it hates me.”

Galway grinned, as the cat swaggered lazily against his outstretched hand.

“It likes me,” he bragged, and could have sworn he saw a twitch of a smile beneath the hat’s wide brim.

“Stupid minx,” said Jem.

*

“Oh, aye,” Galway nodded, tipping the flask back in a swift, easy swallow before handing it over the campfire, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. Feanor’s eldest boy took it wordlessly, and drank in turn. 

“I’ve sailed all over. Well—ain’t never been as far as China, but we crossed the Atlantic on the regular. Trade ships mostly; I docked in America dozens of times before I decided it was time for me to stay. I’ve been south, too, to the Spanish colonies. Served ten different captains in my time—some were right bastards, too, if you’ll pardon me saying so. First time I sailed to the Carolinas, t’was under command of a man who hanged later, after we returned to England. Killed one of the younger midshipmen while we were at sea; flogged him to death, poor lad. Only he didn’t realize the boy came from a good family; his father had connections and when me and a few other fellows tracked him down and told him what we saw—well, justice was done then. It wasn’t always, mind. That’s part of why I decided to give up the sailing. Wasn’t keen on serving men like that, anymore. The sea can be a lawless place, Feanorian. Now, so can this country, for certain—but it’s easier to give up the bad company and find the good, on land. Easier to travel under my own sails. You follow?”

“I follow,” the boy said, and drank again. He looked a little troubled, as he regarded Galway across the fire. 

“I’m sorry you had to see that—that boy beaten. I’m sorry you had to serve men like that.” 

“There’s all sorts in the world, no need to apologize. And I’ve my own scars from the lash, sure, and Thomas was impudent—any worthy captain would have punished him for it. It isn’t the beating I’d an issue with; it’s the cruelty. There’s a difference between a hard master and a cruel one. Any man who cannot tell when to stop a whip should never be given command. Tom didn’t die while strung up, but he wasn’t left strong enough to fight the fever after, and that was that. A crying shame.”

“I hope you will be happier with us,” said Maedhros, very earnestly. “My father thinks well of you, and he—he is fair. He will not treat you cruelly.”

“Your father?” Galway scoffed. “Your father is a harder master by far,” Galway said, mock-serious, and was gratified to see the tall boy’s mouth quirk with one of his surprised smiles. 

“He’d be glad to hear it,” the boy said, and passed the flask back.

*

“What’ll you wager?” Jem said, eyes narrow as she looked him up and down. She was pleased to see he looked a mite abashed, and he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. 

“I ain’t a betting man,” said the big Irishman, half-laughing. “I wasn’t thinking, just now.”

“Oh, you were thinking,” she drawled, tapping the gun at her belt. “Wrong thinking is still thinking, particularly when you run your mouth with it. Go on, tell me what it was you were bragging to Edwards. Fifty paces? Sixty?”

“Jesus, woman,” said Galway, and he did laugh then, shaking his head. “Have it your way then. Sixty paces, two shots.”

“One,” Jem countered instantly, triumphant. A little crowd had gathered by now, most of them her men but some of them Feanor’s. She saw Galway look at them, and shrug as he pulled the gun from his belt. 

“As you like. I’ll wager a week’s drink, how’s that please you? I haven’t any money yet worth giving.”

“Suits me fine,” said Jem. She drew her own piece, and grinned. 

“Ladies first,” she said. 

*

Jem did not exactly mind it, when Galway offered to pay what he owed by taking her to the saloon in town. But she fixed him with a square sort of glare anyway, folding her arms. 

“Ain’t safe in town,” she pointed out.

“Sure it isn’t,” he agreed, and gestured to her pistol. “But I’d have you to guard me, wouldn’t I?”

“Oh, go on,” Jem snorted, despite herself. “As if I’ve naught better to do than babysit a man.”

“It was only an offer,” the Irishman replied, clearly amused. “And the offer will stand, never mind it.”

Jem herself stood firm. And the weeks went by, and the months, and she didn’t much care for making friends, cared even less for taking lovers, but—

*

Another brutal skirmish at the railway lines; another dawn broken weary and battle-sore, if mercifully unscathed. Jem stood by waiting for the last of Rumil’s men to straggle up to be counted before the ride back; Feanor and his sons kept to their own knot of followers, still crawling antlike in the dim light over the burnt rails. Feanor’s sons were tired tonight, and the eldest more than the rest, though that was not particularly unusual. Still, he wasn’t generally tired enough that you could see it, in how he fired his shots. 

She recognized Galway walking towards her in the half-light by his shape and his gait, but even more than that by how he was the only one of Feanor’s company who would walk like this, easily between the two parties. She stood waiting, and nodded welcome, but said nothing; her throat was still too smoke-sore for pleasantries. 

“Unharmed?” Galway grunted, when he was close enough. Jem nodded again. 

“I’ve three injured, but they’ll be all right. I’m unhurt. You?”

“Four wounded. I’m taking them back now; Joad will need stitching, and better quick than later. Feanor and his boys will follow after. He’s down examining the track, yet. Shouldn’t be long.”

Feanor worked by his own timetable; it was another thing that made Jem dislike him. He was certainly clever—far more clever than she would ever be, and better-spoken, too. But that didn’t mean she ever wanted to talk with him. 

“That’s fine,” was all she said now, rolling her tired shoulder. “We can go back together. Just signal when you’ve all gathered. Oh, and that Maedhros,” she added, as Galway began to turn back towards the Feanorian group: “Tell that Maedhros to get proper sleep when we get back. Briefing be damned; I’ll make the report myself to Rumil. I know he will want to be there, but won’t be any good to us dead, and he was damn sloppy tonight. That shouldn’t happen again.”

“I’ll tell him,” Galway said, with his warming smile, “though p’raps not that last bit.”

“As you please. Might do him some good to be reminded not to be careless, though.”

The thing was, Feanor’s eldest boy _did_ know not to be careless—had known it before he ever set foot upon Mithrim’s bridge. She had seen it in him at once, and it was one of the first things she had begrudgingly liked about him.

It was what had her worried now. 

“Look for my wave,” Galway said, and walked back to his men. 

As they made their joint way back to Mithrim, Feanor and his sons and their cunning fires left behind them, Galway let out a low whistle. He was a good whistler, and always ready with a tune; he said it came from sailoring, and she didn’t know enough about the occupation to disbelieve him. The only seas she knew were the prairies where she was born. 

“Christ Almighty,” Galway said, very low. “It doesn’t get easier, does it?”

“No, Galway,” she replied, withering. It always put her in a sour mood, to think of the prairies. “War never gets easier.”

“War,” he repeated, shaking his head as though the word were a joke in poor taste. Then he looked at her sidelong, his face more easily read now the sun was rising higher. 

“How about that drink today, Miss Jem?” He asked. “Thirsty work all night, and I’d be paying.”

She looked sidelong back at him. Galway was a good man; he was not unattractive, either, no matter how very different he was from her dead husband. She liked that he made her laugh, and that she could make him laugh right back. 

That liking was an awful, frightening thing. She didn’t know what was worse: liking the man, or liking his face. 

“Not today, Mister Galway,” she said, like she always said. 

Maedhros was there later that morning, to make his report to Rumil. Jem glowered, but said nothing about it. 

*

The tall copper-haired boy did not hesitate to buy Galway a second whiskey, and another for himself, also. When Galway led the merry _sláinte_ , raising his glass high, the boy joined in with a laugh, downing half his own glass in a single draught. He tipped it towards Galway across the table, raising an inquisitive brow. 

“You, then, sir—Irish?”

“Born and bred in Galway, lad,” he grinned, accepting the drink with a nod. “More or less. It’s where I got my name.”

“My grandfather was a Dubliner,” the tall boy said, smile white and charming. “And my own father would be right pleased to have another Irishman with us, to share the wealth with once we reach our land in California.”

“Wealth, you say? What wealth is that, then?”

The boy caught his tongue between his teeth; set his hand flat upon the table top; leaned forward, eyes bright and secret.

“Gold, Mr. Galway,” he whispered. “Gold, and power. And we are going to share it all.”

*

He was born in the winter of 1816, and he spent his childhood learning to sing in the tongue of western Ireland, the echoes of which would follow him all the rest of his life, all around the world. He shipped aboard a merchant vessel as a scrambling, stocky boy of ten; he thought, someday, he would return home with riches to settle back in Ireland as a man of means. The famine put paid to the last of those boyish dreams, and his final disembarkment was not in Eire, but in Massachusetts. There was gold, men whispered, in the far West of the American continent. Gold, and adventure, and other, finer things. 

They called him Galway, on his second ship, because of the way he talked. At first he hated it, but by the time he reached America it was the only name he used. He killed his first man in the Indies, during a skirmish with pirates. 

He killed his last in a rainstorm in California. 

*

She was the first of her mother’s children to survive childhood; her father had two sons by his first wife, and they treated her like a third brother. She liked rough homestead living fine, and never thought to be ashamed of running barefoot-wild beneath the sun with her elder brothers—not until she saw the preacher’s boy watching her with wide blue eyes, sunburned and ridiculous in his stiff black coat, and very very handsome. 

She was ashamed for an entire afternoon, and then she was angry, and then at the church dance she marched up to the preacher’s boy, stuck out her hand for a shake, and challenged him to a fight behind his father’s chapel unless he took back what his eyes had said, when he had seen her with her wild-bleached hair and brown bare feet in her father’s field. 

It turned out what his eyes had said wasn’t the kind of shock that meant disgust; it was the kind of shock that meant admiration. After she helped him staunch his nosebleed and brush the dust off the back of his coat, she had apologized for the bruise on his face and he had laughed at the look of guilt on hers. 

He was her first kiss, was the preacher’s son. He was all she managed to bring with her, when they fled the flames to Mithrim’s fastness. 

They had been married four years, when Mairon carved off his face. 

*

“Friends call me Galway,” the newcomer said with broad good humor, holding out his hand. 

“Jem,” was all she replied, because she had no friends. 

His grip was firm, and warm; calloused as hard as her own fingers were, if not quite as unkind. She thought, fleetingly, that his hat was ill-fitting, and his skin surprising dark for an Irishman. Thought, fleetingly, that his smile was not unpleasant, and then easily put the thought aside, forgotten. 

He had not seemed unlike any other man, then.

*

“We’re coming with you, lad,” said Galway, to the eldest of the sons Feanor left behind. Maedhros stood red-eyed and hollow, wrecked upon the long shore of his grief. He had just watched his father die, and now he was going to run. 

“Mind the rest for me,” Jem told Ulfang, clapping him upon the shoulder, and the man reached out to mirror the gesture, regarding her with reassuring calm. 

“You mind yourself, Jem,” he said, steadily. She nodded and left him there, going to meet Galway at the gate. Always dependable, he had thought to go to the storeroom for supplies while her instinct had been to seize a handful of bullet cartridges from the powder room, and a spare pistol. 

He was adjusting his horse’s saddle to account for the extra saddlebag weight when she strode up, and she stopped beside him a moment, watching. 

“Been a day and a half of hell,” she muttered, slinging the extra gun belt over her shoulder. “When we get back, I’m buying.”

Galway’s mouth twitched up in half a smile, as he leaned to tighten the saddle girth. 

“Sounds grand,” he said, quietly.

*

A machete in the rain.

An arrow in the eye. 

Somehow, even then, they had thought there would be more left in life, than this.


End file.
